Nordic Next-Month Power Declines on Mild Weather, Lower Demand

Low temperatures in Stockholm may rise to minus 2 degrees
Celsius (minus 28 Fahrenheit) on Dec. 29 from minus 11 on Dec.
27, according to CustomWeather Inc. data on Bloomberg. That
compares with a 10-year seasonal norm of minus 5.

Power for next month lost as much as 2.2 percent to 42.40
euros ($56.33) a megawatt-hour, and traded at 42.65 euros as of
3:10 p.m. on Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.’s energy exchange in Oslo.
The contract for next quarter traded 0.4 percent lower at 41.60
euros after declining as much as 1.2 percent to 41.25 euros.

Higher temperatures and industries shutting down operations
for the year-end holidays will damp demand next week, cutting
the price for baseload delivery to an average of 35 euros a
megawatt-hour, Bixia AB, Sweden’s fourth-largest power-trading
company, said yesterday in an e-mailed report.

The Nordic region’s hydropower reserves, which are 0.6
terawatt-hours short of the seasonal average, may drop further
to a deficit of 6.3 terawatt-hours in two weeks, according to
Markedskraft AS data on Bloomberg. The region gets more than
half of its power supplies by running water through turbines.

The utilization rate of Swedish and Finnish nuclear
reactors may rise tomorrow to 96 percent from today’s 91
percent, if EON SE (EOAN) gets authorization from Sweden’s Radiation
Safety Authority to restart the 638-megawatt Oskarshamn-2
reactor, according to data from operators and calculations by
Bloomberg.

The regulator is reviewing EON’s request, and may ask for
additional information or require more checks before giving
authorization, with no firm schedule for a decision, Section
Head Leif Karlsson said today by phone from Stockholm.

All three reactors in Oskarshamn have been placed under
special supervision starting today, following repeated safety
violations, potentially slowing starts following outages,
Karlsson said.